Dems need Bloomberg vs. Bernie smackdown
What the Democrats need now is a real debate.
No, not one of those Michael Bloomberg circular firing squad gatherings by a bunch of cliché-ridden progressive politicians on a lighted stage looking like a police lineup.
We need a real debate, one that will energize all voters, and at least keep them awake.
That is why I am proposing a one-on-one television clash between the billionaire and the Bolshevik.
That would be between New Yorker Michael Bloomberg, who makes money, and Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders, who spends it.
Democrats who talk about unifying the country must first show people that they can unify the party. And that’s where Bloomie the billionaire and Bernie the Bolshy come in.
If you can unify the two wings of the Democratic Party that these two men represent, then you can unify the world.
Wealth gap and other things aside, the two have a lot in common. Bloomberg is 77. Bernie is 78. While neither is overtly religious, both grew up in modest Jewish households, Bloomie in Medford and Bernie in Brooklyn.
Both also fled their hometowns to seek their future elsewhere, Bloomie went to New York, where he became a capitalist and the mayor. Bernie went to Burlington, Vt., where he became a socialist and the mayor.
Bloomie got into elective politics after he made his fortune. Bernie got into elective politics and then made his fortune.
In reality though, Bernie’s net worth of around $2 million is loose change for Bloomie, who is estimated to be worth around $60 billion, give or take a billion or two.
It is interesting that President Trump, who could face one of them in the election, has nicknames for both. He calls Bernie “Crazy Bernie” for his outlandish free stuff proposals, and Bloomberg “Mini-Mike” for his average height
Bernie graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964 and was involved in protest movements over racial and economic inequality before settling in Burlington in 1968. There he ran unsuccessfully for office, finally being elected mayor in 1981.
After never having had a real job, Bernie has been on the government payroll as a Socialist or Independent — mayor, House of Representatives, Senate — for 40 years.
It was during those years that Bloomberg, who had an MBA from Harvard, worked in 1966 at an entry level job at Salomon Brothers, a New York investment firm. He did that for 15 years before leaving and starting his own financial data services firm.
While Bloomie for the next several years worked to build Bloomberg into what it is today — it employs 20,000 people worldwide — Bernie was attacking capitalism and praising the alleged social progress and benefits of the Communist Soviet Union.
While Bloomie used to go to Bermuda, Bernie and his wife honeymooned in Moscow.
That was in 1988, when Bernie and his wife, Jane, celebrated their marriage in Moscow and then in Yaroslavl, which the then Burlington mayor made a sister city.
There is a video making the rounds again that shows Bernie at a banquet in Yaroslavl, a gritty city of some 500,000 people, living it up with Communist officials after touring housing facilities and an oil refinery.
Following a sauna and a cold shower, Bernie is seen in the video seated shirtless along with his Communist buddies at a long table loaded with bottles of vodka. The group is drinking merrily. In the video Bernie and the drunken Russians, like good Bolsheviks or Bernie Bros everywhere, are shouting “tovarish” (comrade) and singing a boisterous version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
Upon his return to the U.S., Bernie held an hourlong press conference in Burlington at which he praised the Soviet Union for its policies in housing and health care, as well showering praise on the Moscow subway system, which he found to be grand, clean and efficient.
He said he was also proud that he could criticize the U.S. in the Soviet Union. “I think that made them maybe more appreciative of our criticisms we made of their own society,” he said.
And the Democrats call Trump a Russian puppet?
Three years later the Soviet Union collapsed.
Here’s the choice: Elect Bloomie, who will make some of us rich. Or elect Bernie, who will make all of us poor. It’s New York versus Yaroslavl, baby.
Let’s hope the billionaire and the Bolshevik get it on.
I’ll bring the Stoli.